Thursday, July 26, 2012

we headed out early friday morning {after a stormy thursday night which resulted in a little girl not going to sleep until late, which resulted in me going to bed even later since i still had to pack}. i digress.

the weather forecast at the beach was iffy. it said there was a 40-50% chance of rain for the days we'd be there. but we were optimistic!

when we finally arrived {traffic getting to the beach was pretty bad}, it was raining. not bad, but definitely not sunny beach weather.

lucky for us, our hotel had an AWESOME kid pool area. we hit that up right after we got there.

addison even made a little friend. we ended up seeing her both days we were there, so addison got to play with her a lot.

we ate dinner at a restaurant that the hotel recommended the first night. it was right across the street, and since we didn't really feel like going to explore, we just walked right over. it was pretty good. nothing too special. but i did get a bloody mary {which i had been craving for forever} and it was delicious.

the hotel also had a ton of kid activities, including a movie by the pool every night. we made it back from dinner in time to catch the end of the movie that night, but only after we took a walk on the beach with a flashlight looking for crabs. addison wasn't very interested, so we watched the movie {it was alvin and the chipmunks}.

the next day we went out to play on the beach. unfortunately there was seaweed/seagrass stuff everywhere. it lined the shore and was in the ocean. it was pretty gross.

the rip tides were also really bad, and they ended up closing the ocean to the public. we heard that the lifeguards had gotten 16 calls and had to give 2 people CPR that morning. scary!

needless to say, we didn't get in the ocean. but we did have lots of fun things to play with in the sand, so we did that most of the first morning. i also realized that i'm not the greatest sand castle builder. oh well. at least we had fun!

after addison got bored in the sand, we went back up to the pool. she had a lot of fun playing in the big pool too, so we rotated between that and the kid pool area.

the hotel had a character breakfast. a character {splash the dolphin} would come in to the restaurant during breakfast. it was pretty hokey, but addison liked it.

she also loved her float. she would get in it in the pool and swim all over. and swim in circles. she loved it when i swam under her and came up on the other side. and she also loved playing in it even when we weren't at the pool.

obviously all this playing wore a girl out, because she passed out that afternoon. had to get her energy up for the rest of the day!

we had dinner that night at the back porch. i had been to the one in destin, and gigi really wanted to go. i called to see what the wait was, and there was none {which i thought was very odd because 1. it was a saturday night, and 2. we had to wait FOREVER at the one in destin}. so we promptly hopped in the car and headed that way.

it took us almost an hour to drive 3.5 miles. it was a little insane. so much traffic.

turns out, the back porch is by the pier and also a TON of other shops/restaurants/places that everyone wants to go. so i dropped gigi off at the door to put our name on the list {i figured that, by then, the wait was going to be forever} and addison and i headed to find a parking spot.

and it took us forever to do that. i honestly think that if i hadn't seen a car leaving, we wouldn't have found a spot. there were 2 large parking lots, and they were both totally full. crazy.

so we walked a mile {or at least it felt like it} to the restaurant from our parking spot. my mom had already gotten a table {the wait wasn't long} and we sat down for a yummy dinner!

love this little girl! she did so awesome the whole trip. she stayed up late and woke up early, and was great {most of the time}.